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Bangladesh budget: "cut dependence on VAT!" says civil society

Published on

06/29/2018

This month of June, twenty rights-based civil society networking organizations including the Bangladesh agriculture federation, COAST Trust, Krishak Federation, Arpan and more, coordinated by EquityBD, organized a human chain in front of the national press club, urging the government to “emphasize Income Tax instead VAT (Value Added Tax) for revenue mobilization and implementing the 2018-19 national budget”. They also “raised voice on the inefficiency of the bank sector” and demanded to “strengthen the Central Bank to stop loopholes in capital flight and ensure governance in the financial sector”.

Syed Aminul Hoque, from EquityBD, said the Government failed to collect income tax from trade and big economic activities, which is why it is mounting on poor for revenue, which is a blatant injustice”.

Rezaul Karim Chowdhury from Equity BD, who is also part of the Global Alliance for Tax Justice’s Coordination Committee, said “the Finance minister did not keep his commitment in respect of establishing a neutral and a strong bank commission which will assist the bank owners to plunder more public money from banks”. He also said that “due to reduced bank corporate tax of 2.5%, the Government will lose about ৳ 100 crore as extra revenue which will indeed make the bank owners richer”.